What is Aztec? The Saint Grail of Smart Contracts

The Aztec Chain is a new blockchain inside the Maya Protocol ecosystem, distinct from the mainnet Maya Chain.

‍

Aztec is a bet on programmable money and transparent monetary platforms, controlled exclusively by open-sourced, coded rules and policies. Because it is capable of running Smart Contracts, it provides an avenue for Maya derivatives to exist — i.e.  Synths— and to find use cases beyond arbitrage.

‍

It has been forked from the Terra blockchain and thus shares its compatibility with CosmWasm, with all the infrastructure that had been built on top of it and with its vibrant community.

‍

Notwithstanding the huge challenges involved, we intend to take an active role in the quest to find a sustainable algorithmic stablecoin model, and we will not have a “one mechanism for all” approach. Instead, the Aztec Chain will feature a full suite of different stablecoin tokens that coexist while offering different types of risks and complement each other. These algorithmic stablecoins will be turned off at launch, giving us time to perfect their economic designs and run the appropriate bounties’ programs to ensure they are vetted and carefully discussed by the community. Neither Maya nor Aztec will ever subsidize any yields or artificially inflate the demand for any of these stablecoins or derivatives.

‍

For more details on the stablecoins proposed, please refer to “Interlude. Maya 3.0”, in our official Whitepaper. 

‍

The Economics of Aztec Chain

Use cases inside the Aztec Chain serve the inherent value of $CACAO and make the overall economy of the Maya ecosystem more vibrant. For example, all $CACAO that is sent into Aztec, from Maya, pays slip fees in the process, benefiting all nodes and treasuries.
Aztec also complements the Maya economic model, because of its smart contract capabilities, it attracts people to create lending protocols, NFT related projects or any other options available in similar chains, only integrated with $CACAO and Maya derivatives.

If we imagine Maya as a central bank for a second, Aztec would be a lively commercial hub that develops in nearby territory, protected by the security and stability of the former.

‍

Maya & Aztec: A new beginning for Terra users.

Together with other properties of the Maya Protocol, such as the Security Nodes feature, Aztec will be able to offer new building grounds for the projects hit by the unfortunate and recent implosion of the Terra blockchain. Many of them were fully functional already, and were severely affected by the economic and reputational damages resulting from the collapse of their protocol.

‍

In fact, a portion of the $AZTEC tokens, which capture a portion of the fees generated by the protocol, will be airdropped to eligible past users of the Terra ecosystem, as described in Part 5 of our Whitepaper. We hope this offers the community a new beginning.

For now, we’d love to see you join our community, to participate in our weekly AMA’s and to follow us on Twitter and our Discord server!

‍